<meta charset="utf-8">John wrote: <div><br></div><div>>the problem is that our symbolic insurgency has been hijacked<br>by powerful corporate interests that with massive soft money slush<br>funds and insider lobbyists, make sure those elected do their bidding,<br>
and to hell with the masses! </div><div><br></div><div>That alone wouldn't so successfully counter change if those same interests hadn't manage to keep people divided and at at each other's throats by decorating each party platform in its own brightly colored brand of moral wall paper. Vote one way you're voting left and vote another way you're voting right. When in fact, no matter which way you vote -- left or right -- the real agenda had little to do with social or moral reforms. Those are just colored bubbles, to keep us all angry and emotional and feeling as if we're actually accomplishing something when we elect a new government or support the old one. </div>
<div><br></div><div>When it comes to turning a democracy into a plutocracy, neither the democrats or republicans, or liberals and conservatives in my country, can claim to be doing anything different. Glass-Steagel was repealed under Clinton. Obama has made more Wall Street appointments than Bush. Openly right wing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has on a number of occasions rebuffed China on the grounds that they are human rights abusers. Yet it doesn't take a genius to see that from a western corporate stand-point Canada and its precious supply of oil and other natural resources, which China needs and was negotiating with the former elected government to acquire, must be kept as far away from them as possible, and so hiding behind the guise of human rights in order to alienate them is as corporate-minded, and as slimy, as it gets. </div>
<div><br></div><div>The problem is, you can't get at this stuff by listening to what you're told on the evening news. You've got to do you're own digging and thinking. And most people are just too busy, too tired, too angry or too trusting to do it. I blame journalists a lot. I went to a good journalism school here in Canada, and I know these guys aren't dumb. They see it. They talk about it over drinks. But they rarely write about it. Just dumping information alone is not enough, like Wikileaks did. People need and want information to be interpreted for them, and right now we have few media outlets doing that who haven't been hi-jacked by corporate interests themselves. Those that are free to say what they want are so concerned with journalistic neutrality that they forget that those wishing to manipulate them have no such principles.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I wish we had more journalists like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who with one no-holds-barred article kicked Goldman Sachs in the b***s and forced them into the public eye. They've been scrambling to undo the public relations damage ever since, but have not been able to successfully counter one single accusation made in that piece. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Darren<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 11:31 PM, John Grigg <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:possiblepaths2050@gmail.com">possiblepaths2050@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="im">Spike wrote:<br>
They must actually fight and win the war before there is any new<br>
constitution. Since Americans vote, we now have a symbolic insurgency every<br>
two years. It may be far more difficult to gain sufficient support for a<br>
revolution when we have that important symbolic rebellion in which we take<br>
part periodically.<br>
>>><br>
<br>
</div>Everyone seems to be forgetting the classic quote, "the winners write<br>
the history books!"<br>
<br>
Spike, the problem is that our symbolic insurgency has been hijacked<br>
by powerful corporate interests that with massive soft money slush<br>
funds and insider lobbyists, make sure those elected do their bidding,<br>
and to hell with the masses! The recent bailouts of Wall Street,<br>
despite middle class outrage against it, proves my point.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
John<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 12/18/10, Jebadiah Moore <<a href="mailto:jebdm@jebdm.net">jebdm@jebdm.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Damien Broderick<br>
> <<a href="mailto:thespike@satx.rr.com">thespike@satx.rr.com</a>>wrote:<br>
><br>
>> On 12/18/2010 4:02 PM, spike wrote:<br>
>><br>
>>> taxation without representation is tyranny, and must be opposed.<br>
>>><br>
>><br>
>> Curiously enough, I have been in that situation for the last seven years.<br>
>> I<br>
>> pay US taxes on my earnings, but can't vote.<br>
><br>
><br>
> Residents of Washington, D.C. are in the same situation. They have no<br>
> voting representatives in Congress. Their license plates humorously reflect<br>
> this:<br>
> <a href="http://daviding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/20071009_dc_license_plate.jpg" target="_blank">http://daviding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/20071009_dc_license_plate.jpg</a><br>
><br>
> --<br>
> Jebadiah Moore<br>
> <a href="http://blog.jebdm.net" target="_blank">http://blog.jebdm.net</a><br>
><br>
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